Conflagration (7 page)

Slide reined in beside Raphael. “The first to arrive, boy?”

Raphael nodded. Yancey Slide was one of the few people he would tolerate calling him “boy.”

“So it would seem.”

Slide dragged on his cigar and spat out a sliver of leaf that had detached itself. He knew Raphael had a fixation about punctuality, and didn’t bother to discuss it further. “Are you still having those dreams?”

“They seem to be becoming clearer by the day.”

“Any ideas?”

“No ideas, but I’ve made drawings.”

“You want to show them to me?”

Raphael leaned back in the saddle and reached in his right saddlebag. He pulled out a thick, spiral-bound sketchbook and handed it to Slide, who paged through it without removing his gloves. “Twins?”

Raphael nodded. “That’s how they appear. Twin figures, lit from within by a bright white light.”

“The Mosul worship twin deities.”

Raphael looked bleakly at Slide. At times, the demon tended to state the obvious. “Ignir and Aksura, I know that better than most.”

“Could they be what you’re drawing here?”

Raphael sighed. “I’m damned if I know. You told me to draw what came to me, and that’s what I did.”

“But you have no ideas what these figures might be beyond what you’ve put down here?”

“I was on the other side of the ocean and had no idea who or what Cordelia was when I started drawing her from my dreams.”

Slide handed back the drawings. “I hate blind instinct.”

Raphael sullenly replaced the pad in his saddlebag. “I’m sorry I can’t be more precise.”

“Don’t cop an attitude, boy.” Slide seemed about to say more, but both he and Raphael had spotted Argo Weaver threading his way through the moving columns of men. Slide contented himself with a fast warning. “And keep all this to yourself for the moment.”

A clear path opened in front of Argo to where Slide and Raphael were waiting, and he urged his horse forward. The last few times that Raphael had seen Argo, he had either been morose or drunk, and this day was no exception. He slouched in the saddle, and when he reined in beside Raphael and Slide, he looked pale and hung over. “Am I late?”

Raphael shrugged. “Not as late as the ladies.”

Argo grinned despite the obvious headache. “We learn to wait on the ladies.”

“You look terrible.”

Argo laughed. “And so would you, Major Vega, if you weren’t such a damned recluse.”

Raphael didn’t like to be chided about his self-imposed isolation. “I heard the racket coming from the mess.”

“Nervous officer-boys facing their own mortality.”

Slide, who had been staring silently, ignoring Raphael and Argo, suddenly gestured across the field. “The Lady Blakeney approaches.”

Raphael and Argo both turned and peered. At first they saw nothing. This was often how it was when Slide pointed something out. After some fifteen seconds, Raphael was able to pick out Cordelia from the milling khaki. She was mounted on her gray gelding, and wearing blue sunglasses. She seemed to be in no particular hurry, and Argo glanced at Raphael. “Those glasses, are they covering her bloodshot eyes, or is she just being stylish?”

Raphael might be a recluse, but he was not completely out of touch with his companions’ adventures. “Probably both. Cordelia’s been expanding her legend as hard as she can while we’ve been marching through Virginia.”

Cordelia paused to exchange smiling pleasantries with two young officers in a halted staff car. Argo eased himself in the saddle. “Her ladyship is making an art form of being fashionably late.”

Slide heard this, and snorted. Even at a distance Cordelia sensed his displeasure. Her head turned, and she looked directly at where the three of them were waiting. She bid the officers a fast adieu, and then kicked her horse into a brisk trot that quickly brought her to Raphael, Argo, and Slide.

“Good morning, gentlemen.”

“Good morning, Cordelia.”

She looked around for Jesamine. “So, for once, I’m not the last to arrive.”

Raphael sniffed. “No matter how hard you might have tried.”

Cordelia ignored him. “Any sign of Jesamine…” she smiled bitchily, “with or without her Indians?”

Raphael was tempted to point out that Cordelia’s conduct hardly gave her moral grounds to criticize Jesamine’s choice of companions, but he decided it was too early in the day and too early in the adventure to start an argument. He also did not want to make this reunion of The Four any less promising than it was already, but, as it turned out, the choice of conversation wasn’t his. In the next moment, perhaps working on the principle of “speak of the devil,” a column of Ohio braves thundered through the camp, moving out in high aboriginal style, clearly demonstrating how they were arguably the finest light cavalry in all the ranks of Albany and its allies. As they passed close to where Raphael and the others sat on their mounts, a half-dozen riders peeled away from the main body of horsemen, and galloped straight towards them. When they were only twenty or thirty yards away, five of the six swerved to the side, but one kept coming straight at them. Raphael tensed in anticipation of attack, but then, to his surprise, he saw the rider was Jesamine. She was making the grandest of grand entrances. Hardly a skilled horsewoman, she must have been hanging on for dear life, and Raphael was quite amazed that she was trying for such theatrical impact. Had her time with the Ohio endowed her with some new and wild spirit? Only a few yards from the group, she pulled up her rearing horse, flushed and smiling. “So, my friends, are we Four off to war?”

By this point half of the surrounding camp was watching the spectacle, and, as Jesamine brought her horse under control, she acknowledged a round of applause from the onlookers.

TWO

ARGO

Fountains of dirt and flame erupted behind the Mosul lines, and Argo fancied he saw bodies and body parts fly high in the air. The Albany artillery leapt and thundered, pouring a barrage of fiery destruction on the enemy. As the acrid smell of gunpowder permeated everything, the field guns blew away all pretense that war was a dashing and noble business as they relentlessly pounded the other end of the valley. Even rational thought became difficult against the background of the deafening explosions and the doom-shriek of the flying shells. Mosul gun positions, hidden in the trees of the wooded ridge on the Albany right, fired in response, but their shots fell short. A line of Albany fighting machines stood just out of the enemy’s range with engines running and smokestacks belching, ready to roll into the fight the instant that the deadly barrage ceased. Dense ranks of infantry were crouched behind them, equally ready to advance in the mechanized wake of the hulking battle tanks, using their iron-clad armored bulk as cover. The crucial assault would shortly start, and the outcome of the engagement, indeed, the whole future of the war, would hang in the balance. Albany had committed all of its mobile strength to the fight. If they did not prevail, there would be no second chance.

While the battle remained strictly terrestrial, The Four had no function, and Slide had organized that they be stashed close to the top brass until they were needed, believing absolutely that the generals always found the safest place on the field. The theory seemed to be that no shell would dare land among the stiffly immaculate commanders, and no shrapnel would dare tear through the tailored uniforms, the medal ribbons, mirror-shined boots and belts, and the scarlet epaulets of the general staff. A ten-man detachment of light horse had also been assigned as their escort. Albany believed that The Four were their paranormal secret weapon, and were protecting them accordingly. The last thing Albany wanted was that their spooky wonder-children, their antidote to the Dark Things of the Zhaithan, should be shot down, blown up, or captured in some idiotic battlefield mishap. Argo totally agreed with Albany’s view of things. If the winter training had taught him anything, it was never be in a hurry to fight. He had his part to play and he was under no illusion that his time would not come. Romantic ideas of charging with the cavalry were exactly that. They were romantic ideas and, as such, had nothing to do with the conflict at hand.

Unfortunately, the conflict at hand was not going quite as well as the Albany High Command had hoped. Around the map table, faces were grim, and Field Marshall Virgil Dunbar had not been happy since the command vehicles had first come within sight of the valley and he had seen the disposition of the enemy as it really was rather than an abstraction on a map. He had cursed for all to hear. “Goddamn him. I swear that son-of-a-bitch Balsol has had this place in his back pocket since he marched into Virginia, going the other way as a conqueror. It’s too perfect for his purpose to be blind happenstance.”

He had turned excitedly to one of his aides. “You see that third ridge behind him? I’ll wager good money there’s some backdoor there that he can take his whole army through if the day goes against him, and he feels the need to slip away. We are going to have our work cut out, and no mistake.”

The Mosul, under the command of Faysid Ab Balsol, were dug in at the far end of the valley, and, as Dunbar had expected, were waiting for Albany to take the fight to them. The valley, according to Slide, was created by some prehistoric glacier or movement of ice. It was narrow at the end into which Albany was expected to advance, but then it quickly broadened out into a broad, flat, expanse of green, valley-floor meadow flanked by steeply wooded ridges on either side. The original Albany plan had been to clear the ridges before any major assault on the Mosul center. With Mosul guns on the high ground, an Albany advance into the valley would be through a withering crossfire. Unfortunately, the original Albany plan had only been half implemented. The ridge to the east had been cleared and was held by Albany Rangers, the Ohio, and various cavalry units and crews of irregulars, but the slopes on the west side of the valley were still in Mosul hands. The enemy guns were in a dominating position, and although their fire had so far fallen short, any further Albany penetration would be met with both exploding shells and solid iron cannonballs. The enemy was now deployed as an elongated crescent, with the greater mass of them on the valley floor but with a stretched, but fully intact, left flank extended along the western ridge, and this was very close to the last thing that Dunbar wanted. Instead of a fast thrust at the heart of the Mosul center, they would be attacking a double objective, half of which had the full advantage of the local geography.

Albany was not, however, without some advantages of its own, and the greatest of these was their weapons. They came at the Mosul with the edge of aircraft, flying bombs, breech-loading howitzers, and repeating Bergman guns. One on one, they enjoyed overwhelming range and firepower, but, in this battle that so far did not have a name, the balance was nothing like one-on-one. The Mosul outnumbered Albany perhaps three or four to one, despite the Mosul losses on the Potomac, and while holed up in Richmond. Faysid Ab Balsol still had reserves of men to more than counter Albany’s superior ordnance. Virgil Dunbar could, of course, hold off and simply pound on the Mosul with his artillery without unduly exposing his troops. Given the time, Dunbar’s guns could inflict such devastating casualties from a distance that the enemy would either mount a last-ditch attack or attempt to flee, but time was something Dunbar did not have. An army of reinforcements was on its way from Savannah, and, with the weather clear and the ground dry as a bone, there was no reason to suppose it was not coming with all speed. As soon as Balsol had lured Dunbar and his divisions out from under the protective umbrella of the Norse rocket bombs, both commanders knew that Dunbar’s best chance was to finish Balsol and his battered and hungry troops as fast as possible, then quickly pull back into the operational range of the rockets. The fresh Mosul forces coming up from Savannah would have to choose between advancing into the decimating ravages of a prolonged rocket attack, or turning back and leaving Albany in control of Virginia.

All of this must have weighed heavily on Dunbar’s mind as he faced his commanders across the mobile map table, but Argo could see no signs of strain in the Field Marshal’s face or posture. Dunbar had a reputation of a steely, if withdrawn, cool, and, once a decision was made, he was totally resolute. He maybe leaned forward on the map table a little heavily, but Dunbar did walk with a limp, the legacy of a Mosul sniper who had nicked him in the leg during the standoff on the Potomac. As the Albany field guns were momentarily quiet, he spoke with careful urgency. “The option is a hard one, gentlemen. To advance into this forsaken valley is going to cost us dearly, but we have no other choice, except to brace ourselves and pay the price. Without the luxury of time, we have no other alternative. We have to go, and we have to go now.”

He looked round the assembly of his senior commanders as if daring them to counsel further delay. No one did. The smooth-shaven faces of the officers were grimly impassive, as the breeze fluttered the corners of maps that might have flown away if they had not been strategically weighted down with large stones. Dunbar was running the battle from a grassy knoll that overlooked the main trail into the valley and was sufficiently elevated to provide a clear view of the valley floor beyond. Although a command tent had been pitched, he was issuing his orders in the open, in full view of his men, and everyone who was able had crowded round to watch. Argo had used his rank and his position to get as close to the maps and the flow of action as he could. The soldier in the field had no grasp of any bigger picture. All the swaddie knew was shot and shell and the smoke that surrounded him, and the man next to him being suddenly cut down. Beyond that, he had little clue of what was going on, or even whether the fight was being lost or won. Argo liked to know what was happening and what was about to happen, and, the more he saw of war, the more he became convinced that knowledge was the ultimate weapon.

Dunbar raised his voice to take in all those present. He was not generally the kind of commander who made rousing speeches to his men, but he apparently considered this the day to make an exception. “I can’t tell you that there won’t be blood spilled this day, and I’d be a fool or a liar if I pretended the coming fight won’t be bitter. The butcher is going to present us with a bill today, lads, and it’ll come with a total we’ll read and weep. The valley in front of us is going to be immortalized in history, and too many will find their last resting place there. Our task is to ensure that the majority of those who fall are Mosul, and only a very few are from Albany. This day will be formidable, my friends, and nothing is going to be improved by waiting. The time has come, gentlemen. We have prepared long enough, and now we must rise to the occasion. Return to your units. We’ll let the ordnance pound them a while longer, and then we’ll move.”